Baiting the trap

Back at Lexcorp…

Turning off the feed to the security cameras and sitting back in his chair, Lex Luthor closed his eyes and breathed in sharply, exhaling out slowly to calm himself after seeing another of his facilities destroyed. More than half of his kryptonite stock had already been devoured by this… THING and what was worse, three of the four mercenaries he hired had already failed to stop her. Not even the images of Superman writhing in agony from kryptonite poisoning was enough to lighten his mood… Although he DID want to keep the recording for future viewing. Just in case he needed something to perk him up.

Just who or WHAT was this creature? And how did it know where his kryptonite facilities were? The only one who even came close to figuring that information out was… “Lois Lane.” Turning his attention back to the security feeds from the previous two facilities that had been attacked off his desk screens, he waited until the footage showed the woman’s faces in each screen in front of them and paused the images. Typing in a few commands, he brought up a stored picture of Lois Lane and used tracking software to compare the two together. What came back was a 98% match.

No! That could not be possible. From all the recordings he had gathered, this woman was EATING all his kryptonite reserves. Even if the radiation was mostly harmless to humans, with the amount she had ingested, her hair should have been falling out in clumps and her organs failing one by one, not to mention how sickly she should be looking she would have looked like a cancer patient. Instead, every picture of the woman from the security cameras and reports showed her bigger and stronger with each feeding. Somehow, the radioactive mineral was empowering her, to the point that she now rivalled Doomsday in both size and strength. Leaning back, the man’s brow furrowed in thought. IF things continued as they did, this woman would deplete all the known amount of kryptonite he had at his disposal, and she would become the most powerful being on Earth to rival Superman. The idea that there could be an entity that could go toe to toe with the man of steel and be fueled by the very thing that weakened him was too good to ignore. He needed a sample.

Turning back in his chair, the multi-billionaire pressed his finger to his desk’s intercom and waited for the soft beep. “Mercy?”

“Yes Mr. Luthor?”

“The materials for my long-term projects are no longer safe, I think its time we consolidated them to a more… Secure location.”

“Yes Mr. Luthor, anywhere in particular you would like them stored at?”

“I’d like to keep our resources close for this, have it all shipped to our headquarters here… Oh and Mercy?”

“Yes Mr. Luthor?”

“Have our last associate in our deal know of our updated plans, I believe he’ll want to be here for them.”

“Yes Mr. Luthor, I’ll let him know.”

Finally, alone with his thoughts, Luthor got up from his seat and went to the wet bar to the side of his office, where he poured himself a brandy and swirled the glass in his hand. Looking out the double paned glass window of his office overlooking the entire city of Metropolis, Luthor grinned to himself as he set up plans for Lois’s capture. The possibility of losing out on a military contract would be a minor set back but in the long run his original plans would bear fruit. A creature that could feed on Kryptonian matter, and was strong enough to face toe to toe with the man of steel? Every nation would pay half their treasuries for a weapon like that. If he could get a sample of the woman and replicate it, then he would have a small controllable army of the woman at his disposal.

Taking a sip of the liquor in his hand, the man’s smirk grew as his plans developed in his head. The means of capturing her would be difficult, as would being able to get a viable sample, but he was already prepared for that. The last of the four people he hired to stop her should be more that sufficient for what he had planned. It was only a matter of time. Finishing his drink, Luthor stepped out of his office and walked past Mercy who continued to make calls for the man, just getting off the phone with said benefactor still in the game. “Keep me appraised Mercy, let me know when all the kryptonite we have in store are sent here.”

“Yes Mr. Luthor.”

Stepping into the elevator, Lex pressed the button to the sub-basement and waited patiently to be brought to the floor. When it ‘pinged’ and the doors opened, the man marched out where more than a dozen crew and staff bowed and parted to let him pass as they went over his requests, bringing him charts and reports of the three remaining facilities moving the kryptonite fuel on site and bringing it all here. All of them were smart enough not to ask any questions as the man requested pieces of equipment from his other business holdings brought here as well, the lot keeping their heads down and scurrying off to do as they were told with Luthor standing with his hands in his pockets staring out into the closed loading bay, waiting for the shipment to arrive.

“You called me boss…?” Hissed the voice behind him.

“Yes, it would seem the other three I hired couldn’t get the job done, so… I’m changing the job from **** to live capture.”

“All’s the same to me.” Chuckled the man, looking around the empty lot with curiosity. “You figured you could contain her in here? I’ve seen the news; lady can pack quite the whallop!”

“Well, that’s why I have YOU here after all, or are you not satisfied with apprehending a lunatic who eats radioactive material?”

“Apprehension? No satisfaction there, no… Everything leading UP to the apprehension? Oh, that’ll be a gas.”

Satisfied with the answer, Luthor turned and left the docking bay of his building and returned to the elevator, giving the purple-coloured man a final nod before pressing the button to his floor. “Well then Mr. Jones, I’ll leave the matter in your capable hands then.”